Investigations into Karin Grech murder continuing

The police are still actively investigating the letter bomb murder of Karin Grechin 1977, a court was told today.

Police Inspector Chris Pullicino said he and Karin’s father, Prof Edwin Grech, were in regular contact, and Prof Grech had given suggestions on people who might have been involved.

As a result, new lines of investigation had been opened, but he could not say more as a Magisterial inquiry was under way.

The inspector was giving evidence in the case instituted by the Grech family against the Prime Minister, seeking compensation for the incident which left their daughter, 15, dead and a son injured when they opened a letter addressed to Prof Grech on December 28, 1977. The case took place at the height of a doctors' strike.

When asked how investigations were still going on, after 29 years, Inspector Pullicino said the police were investigating all possibilities and he could confirm that the police were still interested in questioning some persons.

The investigation, he said, was concentrated on a group of people who were final year medical students at the time of the incident. These students had gone abroad to complete their course as a consequence of the doctors’ strike while Prof Grech and his family had only returned to Malta six months previously.

Also testifying, former Police Inspector Charles Demicoli said he had been the investigating officer in 1977 and had continued to follow the case. The crime, he said, had been intensively investigated. The police had questioned a number of doctors and he also remembered searching the homes of a number of medical students.

The police had also investigated people whose babies had died in hospital at the time. (Prof Grech was head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology).

When he was asked whether he remembered that Prof Grech was regarded as being a strike-breaker when he returned to Malta, Mr Demicoli said he did not.